Spring 2010 MA Courses

This schedule is subject to change. For the most accurate information concerning other programs and departments, consult the University Class Schedule online, as well as each department‘s own website. Graduate students may not take courses below the 500 level for credit.

CAS AM 502Dressing Democracy: Clothing and Culture in America Touted as the only nation where citizens could not be classified by their appearance, Americans were nevertheless anxious about fashion, etiquette, and deportment. Surveying a wide range of sources in literature, history, and consumer culture, this course will exaamine questions of dress and manners in nineteenth and early twentieth-century America. Carlson TR 12:30 am-2 pm

CAS AM 524 New England Cultural Landscapes A seminar that examines the historic forces that have shaped distinctive regional landscapes of New England, and catalogues the changing forms that made up that landscape. This course focuses primarily on rural, small-town, and residential neighborhood landscapes in town and cities over four centuries. Readings will be selected from the fields of social and cultural history, giving students an opportunity for interdisciplinary reading, discussion, and research. Offered as MET AM 524 Dempsey M 2:00-5:00 pm

GRS AM 735American Culture Introduction to the handling of primary materials from a number of disciplines in order to develop an American Studies perspective. Required of AMNESP first year grad students. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. Sewell W 1:00-4:00pm

GRS AM 747 Building Conservation Theory and practicalities involved in conservation of historic buildings. This couse will cover the history and theory of building conservation architectural investigations of building, including documentary, constructional, and finish materials to materials for conservation. Bittermann W 5:30-8:30 pm

CAS AA 505 A1 Black Community and Social Change Forces within the larger society that enhance and/or inhibit development of the black community. Assesses potential of the black community to initiate and implement changes affecting its own development locally and nationally.Rabig MWF 1:00-2:00pm

CAS AA 564 From Slavery to Freedom: Abolition in Comparative Perspective How did legalized slavery, a world-wide practice for thousands of years, end? The process of abolition in the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere is examined and compared to the later regulation of forced labor and to contemporary slavery. Also offered as CAS PO 564. Crawford T 11:00-2:00 pm

CAS AA 580 The History of Racial Thought Study of racial thinking and feeling in Europe and the United States since the fifteenth century. Racial thinking in the context of Western encounters with non-European people and Jews; its relation to social, economic, cultural, and political trends. Also offered as CAS HI 580. Blakely M 2:00-5:00pm

CAS AA 583 Black Radical Thought Black radical thought in America, Europe, and Africa since the eighteenth century through writings of abolitionists, leaders of revolutions and liberation movements, and Black socialists. Emphasizes the global nature of the “Black World” and its role in world history. Also offered as CAS HI 583.Blakely TR 12:30-2:00 pm

CAS AN 568 Symbol, Myth, Rite Historical overview of ritual behavior, the role of symbolism in the study of culture, and the narrative quality of worldview and belief. Emphasis on verbal performance and public display events in specific cultural contexts. Weller TR 11:00-12:30 am

GRS AN 710 Studies in North American Ethnography A survey including an appreciation of the traditional background and heritage of native North Americans, an analysis of the history and contact with Europeans and governmental policies, and an examination and evaluation of the contemporary situation. Prereq: Consent of Instructor. TOPIC: North American Indians. Shipton MWF 9:00-10:00 am

GRSAR775Oral History and Written Records in Archaeology Comprehensive survey of use of oral and written documentary history by archaeologists. Specific topics, sources, techniques of recording and analysis. Special attention to archaeological applications of African and American oral history projects; case studies involving documentation in New World historical archaeology. Beaudry TR 3:30-5:00pm M 12:00-1:00pm

GRS AH 798 Colloquium in Twentieth-Century Architecture An introduction to the major developments in architecture and urban planning from ca. 1900 to the present. Traces the history of modern architecture in key projects, taking account of formal, technological, and ideological factors, as well as social, cultural, and environmental contexts. Scrivano W 10:00-12:00am

GRS AH 884 Nineteenth-Century Architecture: Inside the Institution This research seminar examines institutional architecture from the seventeenth century to the present. Recent scholarship on power relationships, gender ordering, spatial politics, and the histories of science, medicine, and religion is applied to these building complexes. Morgan M 2:00- 4:00pm

GRS AH 886 Visual Culture of the Civil War America Focus on American visual culture from 1850 to 1870–Slavery, Sectionalism, Civil War, Emancipation, the Death of Lincoln, and Reconstruction– in painting, sculpture, book illustration, the illustrated weeklies, photography, exhibitions, and organized urban spectacles. Hills T 9:00-11:00am

GRS AH 895 Twentieth-Century Art: Contemporary Art and Globalization. Considers how globalization has replaced postmodernism as key paradigm for art produced since 1989. Explores the process by which contemporary art has been historicized and made into a field of study distinct from modern art. Williams F 9:00-11:00am

CAS EN 546 A1The Modern American Novel From 1900 to 1950. Works by Dreiser, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others. Matthews M 3:00-6:00pm

CAS EN 546 B1The Modern American Novel From 1900 to 1950. Works by Dreiser, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others. Van Anglen TR 2:00-3:30pm

CAS EN 547Contemporary American Fiction Syllabus varies from semester to semester but this course may be taken only once for credit. Topic for Spring 2010: Examination of a range of American fiction (stories, novellas, novels) written since WW II. Authors include Bellow, Roth, Ozick, Pynchon, DeLillo, Morrison. Topics include modern disenchantment, faith and science, “world-making,” and the fate of character. Mizruchi TR 11:00- 12:30pm

CAS EN 582 Studies in Modern Literature Topic for Spring 2010: Fictions of the Fifties. Exploration of major fiction written between the end of WWII and the death of JFK. Topics include reactions to literary Modernism, the Cold War, Existentialism, the “lonely crowd.” Authors include Ellison, Bellow, O’Connor, Kerouac, Mailer, Baldwin. Chodat MWF 1:00-2:00 pm

GRS EN 682 The Sixties in Fiction and Theory Examination of some of the most influential literary and theoretical texts of the 1960s. Topics include interpretation, language, metafiction, postmodernism, and multiculturalism. Authors will include Pynchon, Barth, Morrison, Bellow, Sontag, Derrida, and Foucault. Chodat MWF 10:00-11:00am

GRS EN 791Film Theories An omnivorous study of various film theories, examined in relation to weekly screenings of illustrative films. We will also read some literary theory (e.g. about narrative and realism) in an effort to apply that thinking to cinema.Monk T 3:00-5:30pm

CAS HI 560. The American Transcendentalists Led by Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and others, the Transcendentalists constituted the first “counter-cultural” movement in American history. How and why they did so within the philosophical, religious, literary, antislavery, communitarian, and ecological currents they inhabited is the topic of the seminar. Capper T 12:30-3:30pm

CAS HI 580 The History of Racial Thought Study of racial thinking and feeling in Europe and the United States since the fifteenth century. Racial thinking in the context of Western encounters with non-European people and Jews; its relation to social, economic, cultural, and political trends. Blakely M 2:00-5:00pm

CAS HI 583 Black Radical Thought Black radical thought in America, Europe, and Africa since the eighteenth century through writings of abolitionists, leaders of revolutions and liberation movements, Black nationalists, and Black socialists. Emphasizes the global nature of the “Black World” and its role in world history. Blakely TR 12:30-2:00pm

GRS HI 750 American Historiography Examines the methodological and professional development of American historians since the 1880s, changes in the field since the founding period, and new directions in U.S. history. Blower R 9:00-12:00pm

GRS HI 752. Readings in American Political History Introduces students to the field of U.S. political history. Readings are divided into four primary areas of scholarship: government institutions, public policy, social movements, and political culture. Phillips M 9:00-12:00pm

GRS HI 759. United States Foreign Policy The intellectual foundations of U.S. foreign policy since Roosevelt’s coming to office in 1933. Mayers M 3:00-6:00 pm

GRS HI 868 Science and American Culture History of the interaction between science and American culture from the colonial period to the present. Course will include such topics as the American reception of Copernicus and Newton, scientific exploration, the interaction of science and religion, the impact of science on social theory, the rise of “big science,” and the contemporary “science wars.” Roberts MWF 11:00-12:00am

GRS PH 630 A1American Philosophy Detailed analysis of William James and John Dewey and their theories of meaning, truth, consciousness, and experience. Consideration of these theories in connection with selected issues in Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Michael Oakeshott. Kestenbaum MWF 11:00am 12:00pm.

GRS PH 646 Philosophy of Religion An examination of the principal issues and topics in the philosophy of religion in the following two stages: first, an historical overview of the philosophy of religion as a discipline or subdiscipline of philosophy and theology; and, second, attention to the problems and challenges facing this discipline in the context of the comparative study of religions. Zank M 3:00pm-6:00p

GRS SO 708 Contemporary Sociological Theory Covers the basic elements of the major theoretical paradigms in modern sociology, covering topics and problems in the philosophy of social science and current controversies in the field. Stone F 2:00pm -5:00pm

GRS SO 812 Seminar: Religion and Social Identity This seminar will explore a variety of theoretical perspectives on the social formation of modern persons, asking how those insights inform an understanding of individual and collective religious identity. Students will also participate in field research foxused on the intersection of religious and social identities. Ammerman R 9:30-12:30pm